Digital broadband broadcast networks enable end users to receive digital content including video, audio, data, and so forth. Using a terminal, a user may receive digital content over a wireless digital broadcast network. Digital content may be transmitted in a cell within a network. A cell may represent a geographical area that may be covered by a transmitter in a communication network. A network may have multiple cells and cells may be adjacent to other cells. A terminal device, such as a mobile terminal, may receive a program or service in a data or transport stream.
For example, end users may receive program or service information such as a broadcast program in a data stream for example via an IP Datacast (IPDC) over a broadcast network. In addition, IP Datacast also defines an Electronic Service Guide (ESG) which is used to provide information to the user
DVB (Digital Video Broadcast) networks may carry multiple transport streams. Each transport stream may carry a multiplex of DVB services. A multiplex may be defined by the ID of the network of origin and the carrying transport stream ID. A DVB service may be composed of components, each of which is transported in an Elementary Stream (ES). A service component may be identified by the service ID and a PID or alternatively by the sources and destination IP addresses of the corresponding IP streams.
One of the design decisions of DVB standards includes the use of time slicing. Time slicing is used to reduce power consumption of the receiver by sending bursts of the service at a high bit rate corresponding to the multiplex bit rate (or part of it) and allowing the terminal to turn “off” the receiver for the period of time between two consecutive bursts of the service being received.
Currently, two approaches are implemented for supporting lower bit rate services as described in DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcast-Handheld) Implementation Guidelines. (See; ETSI TR 102 377 V1.2.1 (2005-11); Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB); DVB-H Implementation Guidelines section 10.1.1 Service aspects). The first approach implements low bit rate services by packing some other (higher bit rate) service together with a low bit rate service into the same bursts. In this manner, it is possible to keep the burst intervals short for low bit rate services. This method (short bursts occurring frequently) may optimize service access time but sacrifices comprises power savings. The power used to decode the low bit rate service would be relatively high as a receiver needs to decode the entire burst to obtain the bits from the low bit rate service.
The second approach involves utilizing bursts separated by a long off-time period. For example, the low bit rate service may be packed totally in its own burst. However, this approach provides a long waiting time to fill the burst and, hence, the burst interval becomes extremely long. This may be disturbing, e.g., in handover situations and at least in channel zapping (changing the RF channel) situations, where the waiting time could become very long before access for the service.
Therefore, a more efficient method of transmitting lower bit rate services with fast access time and maximum power savings capability in digital broadcast networks would be advancement in the art.